Short Fiction

Sometimes a cliché becomes a cliché because it is true. Such is the case with writing. You may have heard it said that the real work of writing comes in the rewrite. If you have ever questioned the validity of this cliché, then you have never looked at your work with a jaundice eye.

While I am not a Hemingway fan, I agree with him about the art of writing. He said when he accepted his Nobel prize for literature: “How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.” As I write this entry, I have two new short stories in first draft. One is “The Last Friend” and the other is “The Tower.” It is not hard for me to fall in love with these two stories, as I am the one who told them. When I allow myself to step back and look at them carefully, I know they need improvement and they need to be pushed further toward the edge of where I can stretch myself and my writing to go from being an OK or good story to something that will satisfy the reader and not be forgotten.

It is off to work on the rewrites of “The Last Friend” this week and then put it back in the drawer. In the mean time, I will also be plotting the new fantasy I described in my last entry. I have titled it “Dance of Death.”

For more about my stories, please visit www.davidalanlucas.com